Technoscience and the City
April 15 – July 8, 2024
Description
This course explores how Science and Technology Studies (STS) theories, concepts, and methods have been brought to bear on the city as a complex and dynamic object of study, and as an important site of socio-technical, cultural, and political life. A key assumption guiding our collective exploration pertains to the co-productionist relationship between technoscience and the city: technoscience shapes the city but the city also shapes technoscience. Keeping this mutually constitutive relationship in mind, students will be exposed to a range of empirical phenomena: urban infrastructures, the “smart city”, scientific management, locative media, climate change and innovation. By the end of the course, students should have gained an enhanced understanding of the intricate interdependencies of science, technology and the city. The seminar will be held in English and consists of 13 sessions covering a period of 12 weeks: one introductory session, 10 text-based sessions, one guest lecture as well as one excursion to Futurium.
Assessment
1. Discussion lead (30%)
· Approximately twice during the semester
· Leading discussion involves preparing written notes and questions for class use and, depending on class size, may be done in collaboration with others responsible for a given session.
2. Short essay (4,000 words) (70%)
· Complete a final written exercise in a form to be negotiated with the instructor. All such writing is expected to be the student’s own individual work and not done in collaboration.
Key literature
· Felt et al. (2017) “The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies”, MIT Press
· Schubert and Schulz-Schaeffer (2023) “Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology”, Springer VS
· Jasanoff (2004) “States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order”. NewYork: Routledge
· Latour and Hermant (1998) “Paris: Ville Invisible”. Paris: La Découverte.
· Latour, B. (1996) “Aramis or the Love of Technology”, Harvard University Press.
· Easterling (2014) “Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space”, London, New York: Verso
· Graham and Marvin (2001) “Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition”. London: Routledge
· Zukin (2020) “The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech and the New Economy”, Oxford University Press
· Amin and Thrift (2002) “Cities. Reimagining the Urban”. Cambridge, Oxford: Polity
· Farias and Bender (2010) “Urban assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban studies”. Routledge
· Greenfield, A. (2013) “Against the Smart City”. New York: Do Publications.
· Gieryn (2018) “Truth-spots. How Place make People Believe”, University of Chicago Press.
· Hughes (1983) “Networks of Power. Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930”. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
· Coletta et al. (2018) “Creating smart cities”. Routledge.
· Lindner and Meissner (2019) “The Routledge companion to urban imaginaries”, Routledge.
· Evans, Karvonen and Raven (2017) “The experimental city”, Routledge.
· Lachmund (2013) “Greening Berlin. The Co-Production of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature”, MIT Press
